


let's sing a song of all the mistakes we should have made

by kwritten



Category: Sam & Cat (TV), Victorious
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Gen, M/M, Matchmaker Plot, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Motherhood, Multi, Postpartum Depression, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3485435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>eight years after their high school graduation, jade calls an old friend back to los angeles and everyone is forced to face the secrets they've been hiding from each other</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one: cat

It was in their third year of college when Sam and Cat finally made a pact to go see therapists together. Cat really owed Sam for the whole ‘we’re going to college’ thing and Sam owed Cat… well, everything the way she saw it. It was almost funny, afterward, how much what started as a dare changed their lives. For one thing, Cat stopped dating to deflect her feelings for Sam and Sam stopped comparing Cat to Carly. Or anyone to Carly. For another, the medication actually made Cat a whole new person, gave her a grasp on reality that Sam had been unwilling to admit her girlfriend was missing. Cat was still there – but it was like for the first time she knew where ‘here’ was. Which changed everything and nothing all at once.

Mostly, it just drove home how perfect they were for each other – two perfectly fucked up little girls pretending to laugh along when the world beat them down. 

Which is why it obviously only lasted until they were both well-adjusted enough to realize they probably never should have fallen into bed with each other in the first place. It took a while – another two years of fighting and crying and make-up sex and long, long weeks of pretending that everything was alright because being fixed means you’re no longer broken which means you are committed … it was almost like they had to stay together in order to prove that they were normal and okay. 

Normal people work things out. 

Broken people break things.

That’s just logic.

Until Cat came home early from a tour playing back-up singer to a has-been and found Sam giving her station manager a blow job in the living room.

She didn’t even cry.

She spent about a month on Beck and Jade’s couch. Sam got her show syndicated and started dating a guy from an indie-rock band and got her picture in a few tabloids. 

Cat still listened to her morning show and didn’t beat herself up too much for laughing along. Sam still came to all her opening nights in the half-dozen theatres that would hire her. And they stayed friends. “Coffee once a month that never talk about anything more personal than the weather” kind of friends. 

 

“I guess we really did fix each other.”

“What makes you say that?” Sam didn’t hide her bitterness behind humor and curls anymore. Cat thinks she could fall in love with a woman like that. 

“Because _we_ broke, but we didn’t really _break_. You know?”

Sam doesn’t say anything and Cat is old enough now to know not to fill in the blanks for her. 

Sometimes silence is just silence.

 

 

Just before Cat’s twenty-sixth birthday, Jade finally gets what she’s been working for: her own independent theatre. It’s technically funded by her university and also technically part of her grande doctorate project or dissertation or whatever… and she convinces them to all get back together for her first show.

Cat sees no irony in the face that after eight years, Jade is the one who is able to bring them back together again. 

Oh… the others?

They’ve been keeping busy. Jade triple-majored in theatre, music, and creative writing and then jumped right into a doctorate program (or two?) (Cat just knows she’s always buried behind stacks of books or at the student theatre). Beck got a soap his sophomore of college – only finished because Jade said she wouldn’t marry him without that “BA” next to his name. Now he’s insisting she put the “Dr.” in front of hers before he’ll even consider accepting her hand. It’s been a long six years, but he’s still hoping for something a bit more challenging, did a stint on Broadway, but hated New York. Robbie is stage manager at a small but upscale theatre – his lighting designs are pretty wildly admired. Andre got an internship at a record company and now is working his way up the producer ladder. Cat’s caught his name hidden in a couple of hot singles the past couple of years. Trina opened a beauty pageant school and has had a few reality shows poke their heads around, but her determination to keep the girls from being exploited makes it difficult for any contractual agreements on either side.

Cat works mornings at a preschool and is popular in the local musical theatre circuit. She always gets the Chenoweth roles even though she knows she’s an Idina at heart. But, that’s the game.

And Tori. 

Well, Tori left on tour with a little alternative band when their singer caught pneumonia right after graduation and ended up with a record deal. Cat knows not to pay too much attention to the tabloids, but a divorce and a child and an affair with a manager and a brief stint hiding out in India learning yoga or something equally pretentious were all confirmed by Sam’s radio contacts over the years. 

They were all sitting in Trina’s living room (she had the biggest house) (she had the only _house_ ) drinking beer and Robbie was cooking that smelled perfect; and he and Trina are still pretending not to be _together_ even though he moved all his stuff in two years ago; and Cat’s leaning against Jade’s legs from her spot on the floor; and Andre and Beck are clustered around the piano; and Cat felt _good_. Because they all see each other and make time for each other but they’re twenty-somethings in Los Angeles and life is a bitch and so it’s been a while since they were all in the same place at the same time… alone. Bars and opening nights and record parties and beauty pageants don’t count. 

Andre is the one who said it first, “So she’s really coming?” His mouth was full of fancy cheese and he was looking down at the script Jade had handed them skeptically. 

“She’s coming,” Jade has a way of making the impossible sound factual. 

Trina looked at Robbie worriedly and Cat glanced away when he started to rub her shoulders comfortingly, “Mom was in the hospital last—”

“She’s coming.” Beck calms down when he drinks beer. Like way down. Like a Black Hole of anit-energy. 

Jade started playing with Cat’s hair restlessly; like this was the part of the ‘meeting’ she had been dreading the most. 

Cat cleared her throat, “It’s a genius idea. But if she isn’t here, it won’t work. We need…” she should say _everyone_ but _her_ is sticking to the roof of her mouth like peanut butter. No one met her eye. 

And someone changed the subject. 

 

 

The first time Cat saw Tori after eight years, it was less dramatic than she would have imagined (if she had imagined it) (which she hasn’t, not once). They were in Jade’s rehearsal space on campus, the theatre is still undergoing some last-minute renovations under Robbie’s supervision, a herd of Jade’s undergrads alternatively attempting to be helpful or staring wide-eyed at them, and Tori walked in in an over-sized knitted sweater, leggings with boots, a cup of coffee in her hand, and large sunglasses covering half of her small face. 

No one took note of the leggy girl standing in the corner playing with her phone except for Cat. Who stared and tried not to stare and concentrating on breathing. Part of her wanted to be sixteen again – run over to her friend and jump into her arms – but a stronger part wanted to keep her cool, to concentrate on the scene she was rehearsing with Andre and stay in character. Prove just how adult she was. How completely unaffected she was by the ghost appearing in the corner.

She didn’t notice Andre lean slightly more towards her, waiting for her to fall. 

Maybe it was years of having them all always nearby, arms at the ready – hands just waiting for hers – that it wasn’t unusual enough to make note of. He told himself that it was a good thing that she felt comfortable enough to rely on them like that. He told himself to stay steady and so he did. He was good at staying steady. 

Trina was actually the first person to notice Tori’s entrance – but they had fought over the last toaster strudel that morning and she wasn’t in any rush to be the beaming sister, so pleased and tickled to have her (famous!) long-last relative back in the city. 

Jade acknowledged her with a raised eyebrow and a wave of the script in her direction. 

Beck was on location in the desert to the West of LA and wasn’t due back into the city until probably the wee hours of the next morning. The independent film was actually a great opportunity for him as an actor so no one – even Jade – begrudged him not being there.

So the first time Cat spoke to Tori after eight years of radio silence, it was in-character, reading lines from a script. 

“So you finally made it.” 

They hugged.

“I told you I wouldn’t be too late.”

“You’re always late.”

“I always wait.” Tori smiled brightly at Cat, who rolled her eyes back.

“Traffic was bad.”

“Traffic is always bad.”

“I’m always bad.”

“You are who you are.”

“I’m bad at this shit. I’m leaving. Nice seeing you.”

“You just got here.”

Cat felt a mask slide over her face, the mask of a nonchalant character tired of their lines falling over her face. “I forgot my lines. Let’s try again some other time?”

“But that’s not… you can’t just go off script like that!” Tori’s high-pitched wail was forced and fake, Cat knew it from years of rehearsing with Tori late into the night when they both were too tired to try anymore. 

Trina tapped Tori on the shoulder and the scene continued, Cat kissed Andre and Jade goodbye and waved to the interns or students or whatever and walked out the door. She was late for an appointment. 

She txted Jade later on her pear, _REHRSL GO OK SRY G2G EARLY_

Jade txted back in seconds, _u r gr8! c u @ sushi ok?_

 

 

Andrea was wearing a soothing blue color that day. She tended to wear light, calming shades of blue when she was worried that a client was going to react badly to their session. Cat tried not to be curious who the unlucky client was that day. 

“So I was cleaning out some old files and I was reminded that we’ve been seeing each other for three years almost exactly.”

“You say that like this is a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Andrea smiled. 

Cat smiled back.

“Do you remember when you first came to see me?”

“Sure. My girlfriend and I – we decided together to find therapists. The Psychologist recommended you.”

“You had just recently been in the hospital, hadn’t you?”

Cat’s smile widened, “Laryngitis. It was _really_ gross.”

“How long were you in the hospital for?”

“They told me three weeks, but I was so out of it – it felt like just a couple of days.”

“Hmm… three weeks is a long time to be in the hospital for laryngitis.”

Cat’s smile curled into a smirk, “Well, it was a very dangerous strain.”

“Of course.”

They smiled at each other.

“Had you ever been hospitalized before that?”

“Nope. Fit as a fiddle.”

“And you don’t remember anything from your time in the hospital?”

“Why are you asking now… I mean. That was a long time ago.”

“I just saw on the news last night that Tori Vega was in town. I know you two used to be friends and that just before the… laryngitis? You were very concerned for her –”

“She’s in town to help a friend. I mean, we’re all helping.”

“What’s it like seeing her?”

“Fine. Good. Nice. I guess. I haven’t really had the chance to like… catch-up or anything.”

“Mmhmm.”

Cat did her best not to scratch her elbow. She needed to. But she needed the distraction.

“In one of your sessions with Sam that year – she mentioned your brother. Did he come visit you in the hospital when you were sick?”

Cat’s heart began thudding in her chest, hard and fast. She smiled. She smiled until it hurt and that hurt was so familiar it hurt all the more for the scars it had left behind. “Probably not.”

“What about your mother?”

“Mom is in Arizona working. She can’t really afford to come out to LA every time I get a cold.”

“You were in the hospital for three weeks, Cat. I’m just trying to remember if you’ve ever mentioned your family.”

“Jade and Beck and the rest. They’re my family.”

Andrea smiled, “I know Cat. I was just hoping that after … well it’s been three years and I know a lot about Jade and Sam and _nothing_ about your mother or brother.”

Cat felt like she was going to throw up. She smiled. She shrugged. She breathed in and out evenly. “There’s just not much to tell I guess!”

“You can tell me anything, Cat.”

Cat rolled her eyes and laughed, “Duh, Andrea. You’re like my _therapist_.”

“Oh right. I forgot.”

Cat gave Andrea a high-five on the way out the door, “Stay chill, A.”

The mask she had slipped on looking into Tori’s reflective sunglasses didn’t work here, but she wasn’t completely naked. You aren’t just a character on stage. 

All the world’s a stage.

She just had let herself forget. 

 

 

Everything was different and everything was the same. It was weird except in all the ways it wasn’t. Almost like everything had come to their natural conclusions. Robbie and Trina’s legs intertwined under the table and sharing an appletini, Cat tucked between Jade and Beck their fingers in her hair and arms reaching over her plate, Andre and Beck whispering together over the menu. 

Andre sitting rather stiffly next to her when he would have once invaded her space the way that they all did with each other. Like a pile of puppies sitting there in a booth in a respectable, not too-highly priced sushi bar, and not a group of twenty-something professionals. 

She kept her sunglasses on at the table and ignored Trina kicking her under the table. She ordered whiskey and ignored Robbie’s exasperated expression. She paid more attention to her phone than the conversation at the table and ignored their hurt eyes. 

She could ignore a lot.

She was Tori fucking Vega. 

And she was doing _them_ a fucking favor. 

(She didn’t look at Jade once. She’d lose her resolve to stay distant and taciturn if she looked at Jade. She’d lose everything she was pretending she had worked for if she looked at Jade.)

She let them drag her to the karaoke bar in the back after dinner. She ordered another drink and refused to drink. She made snarky comments and accused them all of being hacks. She told a wicked story about Taylor singing in the streets of Paris as if she had been there instead of only having read it in a magazine just like all they probably had. She didn’t look at Jade once.

Except. 

Except Cat was still Cat fucking Valentine. And she still sang like Mariah Carey had a love affair with Bruno Mars. And that alone brought the sunglasses down.

“Jesus, Cat. Where are you working now?”

Cat blushed, “Oh I help run this cute little preschool—”

Tori waved her hand, “No I mean. Singing. Performing. Not that other shit. You should go to New York, I know some people. You are wasting yourself here.”

Cat giggled and it was so fucking cute Tori could have died.

“Yeah but I mean. I _like_ Los Angeles. Why would I leave?”

Tori shook her head, “That’s just because you’ve never left. You should be on Broadway, girl.”

“Tori…” Trina looked somewhere between freaked and pissed and Tori ignored her.

“Let me make some calls. I can get you in the door at least.”

“Tori…”

“No, Trina,” Cat handed the mic to Tori and waved Trina’s worried face away. “Tough talk from a washed-up pop wannabe. How many Broadway shows have you headlined in the past eight years? I’m _happy_ here. With … Why did you come anyway?”

“I can leave! I can fucking leave and _then_ what would you have?”

Cat’s eyes shined and Tori felt like she had drowned a cat in front of a room full of nuns, “Not _you_.”

Robbie and Tori took that moment to practically carry Tori out the door, shouting about getting up early and jetlag. She didn’t get a chance to look behind her and not for the first time she was glad. 

_Eyes forward, Vega._

 

 

Trina waited until they were home and Robbie was hiding upstairs before she said what she had to say. And it was the very last thing Tori was expecting her to say.

She poured a glass of water for herself in the kitchen and chuckled to herself, “So I guess now _I_ know how it feels to have an insensitive ass for a sister.”

Tori rolled her eyes, “Cat is fucking talented. She’s too good for regional theatre. And you know it.”

“God are you really that stupid? And… oblivious?”

“Whatever Trina. I’m going to bed.”

“Cat is _sick_ you moron.”


	2. two: jade

Six months after Tori left, Cat put together a care-package for her. The studio decided to have her record on the road, so Cat videoed everyone saying a special message to their friend. Jade calmly reminded her several times that they could just email Tori the messages, or send them over their pear-pads, but this was back when Cat didn’t know how to let things go. Back when her friends calmly handled her manic moments however they could. The package and the messages were mostly to appease Cat and if Tori ever got it, she probably should have known that instantly. (It wasn’t for her except the things that were.) (It wasn’t for her except the shards of Cat that were offered up like alms.)

Except she never acknowledged receiving it and they all did their best to convince Cat it got lost in transit. 

Sam saw the certified slip in the mail with Tori’s distinct signature and hid it from Cat. 

A fact that they brought up in an intervention a year later when she was still insisting that Tori’s album was all about _them_ and she needed their help. Cat created – over the next eight months after that second platinum album was released – that Tori was trapped by the studio and _couldn’t_ get out and was miserable. She watched all the interviews and music videos and read all the news stories looking for clues. 

It was right around this time that Sam started to suggest them finding therapists together. 

(Sam may have compared Cat to Carly in the beginning, but Cat was never able to be okay with the fact that Sam wasn’t Tori. Even if she never said it out loud or admit it to herself.

Cat was rarely able to be okay with _anyone_ not being Tori, so Sam learned not to take it too personally.)

Four years after Tori left, Cat stopped sending her emails. She sat on the floor in Beck’s lap, drunk on a bottle of terrible gin and cried because she missed her friend. _**Still**_. Even after all that time. The next day, they walked in their college graduation hand-in-hand and she kissed her girlfriend and pretended that someone wasn’t missing.

She almost convinced herself.

She almost convinced herself a half a million times. And pretended that no one else knew the truth.

 

 

“Are we sure that this is a good idea, this feels like a terrible fucking idea,” Andre punctuates his words with a flick of his fingers over the piano. Jade could just wring his neck for hiding behind other people’s music for so long, when he daily shat crap better than anything the studio was making him ‘produce’.

She wriggled on the couch and bit her lip. She was convinced this was a good idea – her best – but she needed to know where they all stood first. 

They all had a right to hate this idea. 

“You’re going to break her,” Robbie still cried when he didn’t know how else to cope. “We aren’t going to get her back this time.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Beck was propped against a wall like he was holding it up with his lean limbs, the same bottle in his hand he’d had all night. She knew he filled it with root beer when no one was looking. No one knew about the six weeks he spent in a rehabilitation clinic after nearly dying of alcohol poisoning. Or that alcoholism – and diabetes and heart failure – ran through his veins like a ticking time bomb. She was still surprised that he was alive, waking up in the night covered in sweat and tears, convinced that she dreamed the past three years. “This could be the thing that makes her…”

“What?” Andre didn’t bother to mask his anger now, his voice hard and his fingers silent. “Make her whole, make her better make her…”

“Sam was _good_ for her,” Robbie interjected.

Trina snorted, “Sam was a bandaid. Everyone knew it. Sam knew it.”

Andre’s fingers beat out his frustration. 

“The last thing I want is to cause Cat undue stress—”

Trina snorted again.

Jade looked down at her hands, “I’ve never loved anyone the way I love Cat. No. One.” Beck smiled when she looked up at him. “I would _never_ do something to hurt her.”

“ _This!” Andre stood and pointed at the pile of scripts on the coffee table. “This is going to fucking hurt her. This… _You_. You just want this theatre to do well. You want fucking famous fucking Tori fucking Vega to make your life mean something. You are so fucking selfish you can’t even see that you are willing to destroy—” he choked and sat down on the ground, head on his knees._

_“I would never—”_

_“ _She doesn’t remember_ ,” Andre’s voice had that haunted tone that they all knew too well now. Jade swore that she’d never do anything to cause him to sound like that. “She collapsed and I held her hand at the hospital every day for three weeks and she doesn’t fucking _remember_.”_

_“That was the medication, they—”_

_Andre cut Robbie off, “The doctor said if that happened again she might not come back.”_

_“We were all there. You weren’t there alone.”_

_“Just thought I’d remind you that you down _own stock_ in loving Cat more than anyone else,” Andre didn’t bother to look up at Jade. And for once, she was glad, happy to wallow without him looking at her. _

_If Tori broke something inside Cat then it was only fair to remember Cat (fragile, innocent Cat) broke something deep inside Andre._

_It was so stupid, it made her so angry, how much the seven of them were tangled up in each other. They never even had a moment to fantasize that they had created _love_ all on their own – they were always too busy proving how much pain a love like theirs could cause._

_They didn’t even create _that_ — just proved how effective it could be. How utterly, devastatingly they could destroy each other. Jade could almost believe that Tori had been the lucky one, leaving when she did, but the destruction she left in her wake suggested that she knew better than any of them the price of their love. _

_Trina took a deep breath, “So what? So if it happens again, we’ll pull her back. We… _you_ … we… did it last time, it can be done again. And if we can’t, then we’ll deal with that, too.” She looked around fiercely, the most changed of all of them. “We love her so we’ll… we’ll deal.”_

_They sat in silence for a while, the only sound Andre’s heavy and erratic breathing._

_Jade thought back and weighed the possibility of going through it all again. As if she hadn’t every ten minutes or so since she decided to do this._

_They always kinda guessed that there was something _off_ … all those stories about Cat’s impossible brother and the ridiculous things he did. When they were younger, it was possible that Cat was embellishing or he was just a figment of her imagination, but that grew steadily less likely as time went on. It started to worry Jade in a general sort of way, but between Cat’s possibly fictitious brother, Robbie’s puppet, Beck’s drinking, Tori’s eating disorder, Andre’s grandmother, and Trina’s… narcissism, it just became part of their reality. There was nothing to be done about it. _

_What can teens really do about the things in the world that harm them?_

_And then they confronted Cat about her far-fetched theories regarding Tori’s alleged kidnapping. They did it gently, didn’t see much in it other than Cat’s normal, slightly manic and always imaginative view of the world. And she took it rather well, they thought._

_Only not long after Andre came over to help her with a school project and found her collapsed on the ground._

_She was dehydrated and malnourished – doctors said she probably fainted from a general lack of food and asked a lot of questions about her anorexia – something they all swore up and down she had never struggled with before. Because she hadn’t._

_When she woke up, she was Him._

_The brother._

_Talked, walked, swore, ate, and wasn’t her at all._

_They kept her pretty sedated for the first week, hoping she’d snap out of it. The doctors not taking it very seriously._

_Which – in hindsight and with a few dozen psych classes under her belt – Jade now realized was fucking terrible medical care._

_A week of dealing with this and Jade started making phone calls. She and Sam sat in their apartment and called every number they could think of. Cat’s family had been an absent and mysterious non-presence as long as Jade had known her, but she finally found the mom – and more importantly the mom’s doctor – who flew in from Arizona immediately._

_It was complicated and she used a lot of jargon that confused Jade at the time._

_What they learned – once they waded through the words – was that the brother was Cat’s mother’s schizophrenic creation. For all of her life, Cat had been raised by a mother that saw and spoke and listened to a brother that wasn’t there. When she was young, she would (probably) pretend to be the brother, take on the role of something that her mother so obviously craved: a son._

_It was unlikely – though impossible to know for sure – that she had ever completely retreated into the persona created by her mother’s illness. And since the two personas seemed to have no memory of each other, there was no way to even determine whether this was something _forced_ upon her – or a natural defense mechanism._

_When Cat woke up and was Cat again, they told her it was laryngitis. They were told she probably didn’t need anit-psychotics, but to keep an eye on her just in case. Everyone called it a fluke – a result of an unprecedented breatkdown._

_Her new, Sam-inspired psychologist found her a therapist and together they diagnosed her with bipolar disorder._

_Funny how ‘just bipolar’ can suddenly be a relief._

_A sigh in the dark._

_They all grew up that day. It was terrible and the worst and it sucked worse than anything ever had before. But they knew they were grown-up, sitting in a hospital waiting room, waiting to see if they were ever going to see their friend again._

_Jade stood up, hands held palm-up to Andre, “I’m not walking into this without a plan. You have a very low opinion of me.”_

_“Maybe you should have started with that, babe,” Beck took a swig of his rootbeer-in-beer-bottle and looked like a nonchalant douchebag. Which is why she loved him._

_“The first thing you need to know is, I talked to her therapist, Andrea. And she agreed that this is a good idea. We’re…”_

_“YOU TALKED TO HER THERAPIST BEHIND HER BACK?!” Trina’s voice was low but it still sounded like a shout to Jade’s ears._

_“I can’t … I can’t live like this anymore. Just _waiting_ for her to break again. Waiting for _him_ to pop out and for us to lose her forever. I’m done. I can’t.”_

_Jades hated crying in front of people._

_But the four people staring at her weren’t people. They were family._

_So she cried. She fucking cried standing on her feet and no one moved until she was done, drawing in a deep, shaking breath and said, “I don’t think any of us think this is fair to her either.”_

_“So you… you _what_? You decided for her – and for all of us – to bring Tori back and what?”_

_Beck shrugged himself off the wall, finally, “And she either breaks or she doesn’t. She remembers _him_ or she doesn’t. And either way we at least _did something_ instead of sitting on our asses and being scared all the time that we’re doing it the wrong way. There isn’t a guidebook for a situation like this.”_

_“Actually, there are like half a dozen self-help books for people with bipolar family members,” Trina said practically._

_At the same time that Andre hissed, “So you _knew_.”_

_“Come on, man. That’s how this works,” Beck gestured between him and Jade. “You know that.”_

_Jade ignored Andre’s stormy face. It wasn’t something she could really handle at that moment._

_“Okay,” Robbie stood up. “Okay I’m on board. I’ll do… I’ll do whatever I can to help. The show and Cat.”_

_Trina nodded from the couch, reaching up to grab Robbie’s hand, “That’s how this works.” She shrugged. “I get it. I don’t think this would have been my first plan but it’s better than what we’re doing so.”_

_Andre stayed on the ground, silent and sullen._

_Jade grabbed her coat, “I need sleep. I have to teach a class in the morning. I’d love to stay and yell at each other for a while longer but I’d rather stab myself in the eye with scissors.”_

_Beck was eyeing Andre like he wanted to ask him to come home with them, but more Jade time was probably the last thing that Andre needed._

_At the door, Robbie called after them, “What was the second thing?”_

_Jade looked back and saw Trina crouched next to Andre, rubbing his shoulder, “What?”_

_“You said the therapist was the first thing. What’s the second thing?”_

_Jade could feel Beck stiffen next to her. She smiled, “Tori’s flight lands at 8 tomorrow morning. Hope Trina has the guest room ready.”_

_Trina flipped her off from her perch next to Andre._

_Jade closed the door, but didn’t follow Beck immediately. Stood in the doorway and watched Robbie join Andre and Trina on the floor, closing her eyes the second before he pressed a shy kiss against Andre’s brow._

_“Babe?”_

_She opened her eyes and Beck was looking down at her, eyebrows raised._

_“You can stay if you want… for Andre or for…” Jade shrugged._

_“I’m more worried about you.”_

_“I’m fine.”_

_“You didn’t tell them _anything_. You haven’t in so long I don’t think you _can_ tell the truth.”_

_Jade laughed and it was so like the first time he heard her laugh, low and throaty and bitter, that something in his heart tugged dangerously._

_“When has that ever not been true?”_

_“There’s a first time for everything.”_

_Jade looked back at her friends… her lovers… her family – sitting in a pile on the floor and comforting each other the only way they knew how anymore – and shook her head. “Not tonight.”_

_“Cat is sick you moron.”_

_Tori was halfway up the stairs and when she turned, Trina was lowering herself into a chair in the living room, tears streaming down her face._

_“ _What?_ ”_

_“I mean,” Trina shrugged. “She’s been doing okay recently. Her meds seem to be working but…”_

_“Is she … dying?”_

_“She’s bipolar.”_

_Tori laughed and it was hollow and ash on her tongue, “Well, yeah.”_

_“No. I mean like I’ve had to sit with her while her stomach was pumped three times since you left. I mean we found cuts on her thighs at the beach. I mean she once had a bad reaction to her meds and thought she could fly and Beck had to talk her out of a tree. I mean I have a whole box in my shed of her unfinished projects – a play, a half-written musical, a whole album she could never get the way she wanted, 13 episodes of a sitcom. I mean she’s cried herself to sleep on my couch and I’ve cried myself to sleep for a week when she went missing and we couldn’t find her. You don’t fucking _know_ because you _**ran away**_.”_

_Tori thought seriously about making her way down the stairs to her sister, but she wasn’t sure if her legs still worked._

_“Didn’t Jade tell you why she called you here?”_

_Tori’s face paled. _Jade wouldn’t tell… she promised she wouldn’t tell._ “Wha- What do you mean?” she croaked out._

_Trina shrugged, “Jade thinks that you being here will help C—”_

_“How could I possibly help with something like this?”_

_The look Trina gave her could kill. There was something here she was missing and she didn’t like the feeling that was playing a role in a story she didn’t know the ending to._


	3. three: trina

Trina was starting to feel like a vintage denim jacket that had been thrown in the wrong wash cycle too many times and was now fraying in places where maybe it shouldn’t. 

Most days she could get by. She loved her job – it was perfect for her, all that yelling and coaching and for once things weren’t about her. 

When Cat collapsed, she got a job offer. Trina, that is. She didn’t go to college like the rest – determined to make it on her own mettle, joined the actors’ guild and paid her dues in the back of chorus lines in _A Chorus Line_ and as silent maids. And most people would have said this is what changed her, going through the struggling crisis that everyone eventually has to go through. Learning to be in the shadows supposedly turned her life around. 

No one (really) knew that two days after Cat was admitted to the hospital – before she woke up even – Trina got the call.

The call that everyone dreams about. 

The _pack your bags, your life just changed_.

And she’d really love to say that she didn’t hesitate, that she saw her friend lying in a hospital bed and just said no.

But she said yes.

And when they all hugged her and Beck smuggled in champagne to the waiting room and they drank out of paper cups Andre sweet-talked out of the nurses’ station and they told her Cat would tell her to go – she chose to believe them.

She was Trina Vega.

She deserved this.

And she’d really like to say that she changed her mind and didn’t get on the plane, except she did. She turned away she had no regrets.

And she very nearly made it. To the top or whatever. She really did. 

It wouldn’t even have been very hard. Things were going well – she was well-liked and relatively respected. 

And then someone put walnuts in her parfait. And… well… 

When the smoke cleared and she had a new parfait and she was re-applying her eyeliner, management very gently reminded her that she wasn’t worth enough to pull diva behavior. She smiled sweetly and agreed with him. _God, divas are **so** annoying._

Except, she was Trina Vega. 

She was exacting and particular and a picky eater and had sensitive skin and a sensitive nose and always had been. For the first time in life, she had to not be what she is. And it wasn’t just hard, it was _impossible_.

At first, holding it in mostly worked. She felt tense at the end of every day – wasn’t able to socialize in the evenings like she always had been before. Too exhausted and anxious to even cope with a simple meal with any kind of grace. She was suddenly aware of her relative lack of grace. Somehow, that hadn’t seemed to matter before. 

And then she was crying for no reason whatsoever. 

Usually when no one was around or looking.

Until she snapped and destroyed a make-up table when someone misplaced her favorite dressing-gown. It felt like such an awful relief to scream and rant and destroy something… for about thirty seconds and then she was in a heap on the floor, crying hysterically. It took them an hour to calm her down. She was sent home – sternly – and told to figure it out. 

A girl in the costume department said that sometimes people just can’t handle the stress of the job – while handing her the card for her cousin’s office. A therapist. Which she didn’t think she needed, but when a producer made his way over and said she wasn’t allowed back on the set without a full psych-eval … well, she didn’t have much of a choice. 

She learned that there were half a dozen terms for people who were ‘particular’ like her. And after a half-dozen awkward tests, she had somewhat of a diagnosis for her anxiety and outbursts. 

Her parents had done a real number on her – and she still couldn’t tell if it was a good one or not. They taught her to channel her anxiety and discomfort into anger and rage. Which was why she was undiagnosed for so many years. Generally speaking, females were trained to express themselves – particularly anxieties and stressors like Trina’s – into tears. Her anger and tantrums were the coping mechanisms allowed and understood by her parents. Which wasn’t any more or less harmful as an adult as it was a child, it’s just that adulthood required more of her. 

So she found new coping mechanisms. Prescription drugs worked miracles – she had never known just how _easy_ living could actually be. She found yoga and meditation and hiking and a more natural diet. And when contracts were circling around and everyone expected her to sign on for another year, she opted to go home. She filmed a really brilliant death scene.

And then she started over in LA.

And she was happy.

And she stopped denying herself the things that she wanted.

Robbie was… hard at first, they both had a lot of baggage and their own things to work through. 

She learned that he was a package deal and sometimes Robbie meant Andre or Cat or Beck & Jade. 

He learned that sometimes she couldn’t have him too close or all she _could_ do was hold him flesh to flesh.

Which was all-Trina.  
She started learning where her illness was and where she was and what lines she couldn’t extract anymore and that it was okay to just be Trina. 

They both learned that she needed her own bathroom and closet and bed and room. They both learned to be more fluid and accommodating. 

And she learned how to hold hands. 

More importantly – or significantly – she learned to hold hands with Robbie. Robbie who sometimes forgot to wash his hands after working in the dusty catwalk at his theatre, Robbie who was sometimes clammy, Robbie who sometimes for so lost in his newest creation that he forgot when he had showered last. Robbie’s hands in her hands, where they belonged.

 

But leaving when she did meant that Trina didn’t have the same possessiveness over Cat’s illness the way that the rest of them did. She saw the beginnings and she learned more about being a selfless, caring, dependable person during Cat’s re-adjustment than she ever had at any other time in her life.

She just didn’t have that personal, first-hand experience with Cat not being Cat. Cat had always just _been_.

Just as Trina had to learn for herself how to be both Trina and Trina-with-anxiety and Trina-who-used-to-have-public-temper-tantrums and _just Trina_. She did most of that without anyone watching. Just her and her mirror. And then she watched Cat grow into herself and it was beautiful and intimate and as self-exposing as Cat always had been. 

So when Jade (and the rest) linked Tori as the catalyst to Cat’s ‘downfall’ – Trina accepted it because… well, they were sisters and she didn’t hear from Tori any more than the rest of them had in the last eight years. She found out that Tori had given birth from Sam while she and Cat tried to teach themselves how to crochet (another failed project) on the living room couch and Sam alternatively tangled their yarn, yelled anecdotes from the kitchen, and kept changing the television display from ‘how-to’ guides to MMA highlights. 

She had enough of her own resentment towards Tori to let the rest of them fester without really thinking twice about it. 

Except, Tori came home and she was living right under Trina’s nose – and okay she was still not really aware of her surroundings and had turned into a bit of a spoiled brat and she was a terrible slob… but _Cat_ was fine. 

She stood up for herself when Tori was a brat at the bar that evening. 

For so long, Trina had been watching Cat branch out inside of herself, testing her own waters, while Jade and Andre and the rest watched her warily – arms held out in case she pushed herself too hard. 

And here was Tori, getting up in her face and saying all the wrong things and being a completely abrasive, potentially destructive source of energy.

And Cat was on fire. 

 

 

Trina crawled into Robbie’s bed that night, watching him for a while as he scribbled notes in his script for Jade’s project and muttered to himself and thought about the fight she had just had with her sister.

“I don’t think Jade told Tori why she’s here.”

“Yeah… _no green mark_ … I mean why would she?”

“I guess… I just don’t really…”

“You were on board, though. Right?”

“I just think that maybe we should stop acting like there’s some secret that Tori’s supposed to just _figure out_ on her own.”

“So… like what a _scratch on beat two_ like a meeting do I need to make a powerpoint.”

Trina scrunched down under the blankets and folded her arms over them across her chest, “Why not?”

“Ah… _nail bits_ … yeah sure sushi for dinner sounds great.”

“We just had sushi for dinner tonight.”

Robbie flipped through the script, “ _Sushi note no_. Kay I made a light change.”

“Robbie?” Trina poked him in the cheek.

He blinked down at her owlishly and not at all endearingly, “Are you _staying_?”

Trina shrugged and then pointed at the papers in his hand, “I think you just added a note about sushi instead of a light change.”

Robbie laughed, threw the papers to the ground with a slap, and leaned over to kiss her, “I’ll fix it in the morning I guess.”

Trina sighed, “How do you feel about general and possibly non-sexy cuddles that I cannot promise will last all night?”

Robbie slid down the bed and drew her against his chest, “You leave when you need to, I’ll just be here enjoying this moment and not questioning it.” He breathed in the scent of her hair which was very fifteen-year-old-boy of him and also just _him_.

“I’m breaking the rules.”

Trina tensed, “Okay. But I have the right to veto.”

“I have to ask because I love you and it’s my job to ask. Are you okay?”

“Yes. No. Yes. All the answers. Can I still veto?”

“Um… I don’t think so. Do you want me to schedule you an appointment with Delia sometime in the next couple of days? She’ll move things around if you are feeling like you need it.”

Trina shook her head, she didn’t need her therapist.

She needed her sister.

She needed to be a sister. 

Maybe she and Tori had never been close, and she learned that you can’t fix things but you can find a new path. Things didn’t have to stay this way.

“I think I should close the studio while Tori is here. There isn’t anything coming up and the girls can be without me.”

Robbie nodded and squeezed her gently, “Don’t push yourself too hard.”

The first time they tried to take a vacation, they learned that Trina needed an _exact_ schedule. Or – through experimentation they later learned – something other then ‘wake up whenever and then play it by ear.’

“I haven’t been making it to yoga this month and Jade could use more help at the theatre than she is willing to ask for.”

“Wake me and I’ll go running with you in the morning.”

“Only if we make with the big sleeps now.”

Robbie stretched his long arm over her to turn out the light. 

A few minutes later Trina elbowed him in the stomach and then had to catch his arms so that he wouldn’t fly to the other end of the bed and leave her alone and exposed, “Are _you_ okay?”

“Yes. No. Yes? I’m worried.”

“About Cat?”

Robbie chuckled, “About Andre mostly, actually.”

Trina nodded – even though she was mostly thinking about the way Jade was watching Tori and Cat that night at dinner. Like a dog watching a cat playing with a mouse and not really knowing how to understand or walk away. 

 

In the morning, Robbie woke up to find Trina had moved to her own bed sometime in the night. He smiled to himself and went downstairs to make her morning smoothie for when she got back from her run. She didn’t try to wake him (she never did – he always told her to and she never did and he never was hurt by it and she never stopped needing to know that if she wanted him to come he would).


	4. four: jade

When Beck was asked to head up a revival of _Aida_ in New York, Jade didn’t ask pointedly if he was really fit for the job – she just packed his bag and promised to be there as soon as she could. His soap let him fall off a waterfall before he left, they were all proud of him (and hopeful that his tenure on Broadway would get the show some additional publicity). 

She arrived an hour too late to drag his drunk ass out of the theatre before he lost his position as lead, but just in time to catch the argument backstage, cover his bases as much as possible, get him on the Sunday matinee with options for more stage time if he behaved himself, and saved him from the tabloids. She rehearsed with him after he sobered up, learnt the entire script backwards and forwards. They told her it was a shame New York wasn’t quite ready for an all-female cast of _Aida_ because she played Radames better than either of their paid actors. (Beck may be nursing a hangover every other day, but his alternate was a ‘functioning’ high _every_ day. That’s showbiz.)

Jade retreated to Columbia’s campus whenever she could – for the first time in her life preferring the dusty solitude of a library to the fantastic bustle of the backstage of a production. 

On a Friday night when Jade knew Beck was safely onstage (Aida personally throwing her out the door roughly and demanding that she take a night off _for fuck’s sake_ ) she wandered into a dusty old pub and nursed a beer and ended up sitting next to none other than Tori-fucking-Vega.

Or maybe Tori sat down next to her – she never considered an alternative in which Tori actively sought out the presence of someone she knew that night, regardless of all future information gleaned. 

Tori ordered them both whiskeys on the rocks and they cheered silently. 

“You look like crap,” is what Jade wanted to say. Years later she would still wish that’s what she had said instead.

Instead. 

As if there was a universe where she was capable of hiding something – anything -- from Tori Vega. 

As if there was anything else to say but… 

“Sometimes I think if I walked away it wouldn’t matter to him at all and I’m only hanging on because I’ve convinced myself – or us I guess – that love is supposed to hurt.”

Tori snorted into her third whiskey, her eyes were smudged black with mascara – not like an intentional smoky eye but like she had been crying and didn’t give a fuck if someone figured it out – and her hair was matted a bit to her head on the left side and there was a run in her leggings on one thigh. She slapped a receipt clipped to a flyer for a Planned Parenthood on table and ordered another round. 

Jade caught her arm before she had a chance to put the sweet liquid to her lips, but the other woman just stared back at her – hollow tired eyes meeting hollow dead eyes over a sticky table in a shitty bar.

“Sometimes you don’t get a choice. Stay, go… _keep_. Three months after you are okay and happy and fucking _hopeful_ and it rips itself away from you anyway,” Tori spit out the words like they were a disease infecting her mouth by lingering on her tongue.

They took their fourth drink and Tori didn’t think of Jade holding Beck’s hand as he retched up his stomach and her dignity into the toilet but no one holding her hand as she cried on the floor next to his silent form and Jade didn’t think about Tori sitting on an anonymous bathroom floor with blood between her legs and tears streaming down her face and no one holding her hand as a dream died around her. 

“So write a fucking song about it,” her voice was hard and she almost felt like the young girl who had showed her love in sharp and strange ways like a cat bringing the mangled vestiges of dead enemies to your feet (instead of the begging, pleading woman who grew soft in the face of unending pain with no hero and no villain and only victims). 

Tori just laughed and shrugged, “Oh it’ll be a hit.” 

And then she took her friend’s hand and held it while they drank and talked about nothing at all. 

While Jade was piling them into a cab, that’s when Tori got the drunk sobs. She was quiet about it – subtle about her pain the way Jade had always known to be. 

“It hurt so much more than Katie.”

“Physically?”

Tori wrinkled her nose, “No… after… the after hurts more.”

Jade gave the driver directions to Tori’s condo (yes, she knew where it was). 

“Do you think Katie knows?” Tori whispered to the window she was painting on with her chapped finger. “Do you think she knows I don’t love her?”

“Oh Tori, I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It’s not. But it is,” she laughed self-deprecatingly. “The title of my next album.”

“The indie-crowd will love it.”

“I _do_ love her, you know. Katie. But I didn’t _want_ her. He said he did … but I didn’t want… I thought if I wanted… that I could be different … that it could make me a new kind of …”

“Person.”

“Parent.” Tori looked over at Jade and shrugged, it was as impossible for anyone to lie to Jade as it was for her to lie. The only person Jade had ever been capable of lying to her was herself, “Okay, _person_.” She curled her legs up on the seat and leaned into Jade’s side – almost like she fit there. “Does that make me a terrible person?”

Jade stroked Tori’s hair and watched the city streets zoom by. “I think _wanting_ to be a better person doesn’t make up for terrible choices, but maybe…”

“Maybe terrible choices don’t make me a terrible person.”

Jade handed Tori to someone who looked like maybe a housekeeper and walked the rest of the way to the ramshackle condo the company had put up Beck in. It took a little over two hours and she may have gotten lost, but she was aimed with coffee and bagels – which was enough to lure Beck out and into an AA meeting. 

They did good after that… for a while. 

He was sober. Until he wasn’t. 

The day he got his one year chip was the day she sat at his bedside, holding his hand, praying to a God she didn’t believe in just to wake up. 

She called Tori.

They did that. Usually only in the darkest, most fucking scary times of their lives, they called. And they always picked up. No matter what. 

She called Tori, who caught the next flight to LA from Agra and took Jade to a fancy spa after Beck admitted himself to rehab. 

Oh, they had kept in touch in the regular ways. Mostly pictures of Katie growing up and anecdotes from each other’s lives. Tori teased that they were almost like pilates-moms and all Jade needed was a Katie of her own. Jade just smiled deviously and outlined the plot of her next play – about a woman who ate her offspring. 

“Never change,” Tori always laughed. 

“Never could,” Jade always cut back.

And they never admitted – even to each other – how much that was no longer possible. It felt like eons since they had been the children that first met each other in a schoolroom. 

The only one who knew about Jade’s ongoing friendship with Tori was Beck. Which is why he was the least surprised when Jade started putting the pieces together to bring Tori back. The only one who could guess that every time Jade protested that this was the ‘right thing for _her_ ’ … even she wasn’t sure which ‘her’ was being protected or helped anymore. 

Even if he didn’t know what Tori had whispered in that cab so many years ago … what even Tori seemed to have forgotten she confessed.

“Don’t tell Cat about my Cat – my Katie – my… don’t tell her… I couldn’t ever not love Katie she’s my… Tell her to forget me, help her to forget me… because… _my Cat_ …”

_My Cat._

Jade had done what she could to help Cat heal – had held her hand as well she could.

But if there was anything she had learned from holding Beck’s hand – from letting him hold hers when she didn’t think she could breathe on her own anymore – was that the only true cure for a broken person was another broken person. 

She had watched Tori and Cat run into disaster head first time and time again – try to pick up the pieces of themselves off the floor and leave the rest behind. As if the parts of Cat that were etched into the fabric of Tori could be cast aside over enough time. 

But they weren’t whole without each other. 

So Jade played matchmaker under the guise of a theatre director under the mask of a fledgling psychologist. 

Oh, _that_. Her MS in psychology and credential in marriage/family counseling was going to piss them all off. It was going to make them hate her. 

Possibly forever.

But they’d never guess that she was playing Mrs. Bennet – pairing up her loved ones with a single-minded recklessness and hoping for a crisp autumn wedding. 

Well… except Beck. He had figured out her ultimate goal from the beginning – even without knowing all the information that Jade did – and was doing a rather poor job of _not_ playing the amused Cheshire Cat.

Luckily, no one else found this behavior particularly unusual – Jade had actually overheard Andre ask Beck if they had been doing more of the Karma Sutra Bingo without him again. 

So… she was a dark, scary, soul-less lump who _really_ wanted her best friends to admit they were in love already.

Was that really so bad?

And just to be perfectly clear, she wanted her show to go well and there was no one that she trusted more than these seven people and if they got their shit together it was going to be perfect. She was kinda counting on them not – around the middle of Act Two the script started to disintegrate until the actors were left on stage with music, lighting, and entrance/exit cues but no actual script in their hands. They weren’t allowed to rehearse this part, or see what Robbie and Jade had planned for them. It was all either going to be the most horrible disaster ever seen on stage, or the most beautiful one.

Knowing her friends the way she did, she was leaning towards the latter.

“Babe, this is either the best idea you’ve ever had – or the worst.”

Jade sighed, “I just hope I’m able to top it someday. It would suck for this to be the best thing I ever do.”

Beck threw his copy of the script onto the couch and lay down with his head in her lap, “If it doesn’t all end with Tori and Cat kissing, you’ll have to do it.”

“Kiss Tori?”

“Or Cat, it’s not like either one of us is picky.”

Jade shook her head, “It’ll end the right way, you’ll see.” She looked out the window and pursed her lips, “Or it won’t end at all and we’ll be stuck in the theatre forever.”

Beck closed his eyes, “You should make that a movie script.”

“Would it end in ghosts?”

“Maybe they were always ghosts.”

“Died in a freak accident right before curtain and just went on stage without knowing anything had happened!”

“I’d watch the hell out of that movie.”

“Play.”

“Both.”

“It’s going to work, isn’t it?”

Beck pressed the palm of her hand to his lips, “Maybe not the way you want it to.”

“As long as she gets the girl in the end.”

“Oh man. I wish I could tell them all what a hopeless romantic you actually are.”

“I’d kill you and grind up your bones.”

“That’s my girl.”

 

 

Three days into the great experiment and things seemed to have plateaued. 

The great showdown at karaoke the first night spoke of so much great potential for a quick resolution, but the next two days were mild at best. Trina had decided to take this time she had with Tori off from work and seemed to be trying to cram all the sisterly-bonding activities she could into each day. She seemed the most terrified of all of them that Tori was going to suddenly just disappear like the Wicked Witch of the West in a puff of smoke. Thematically, that would only work if they ensured that she had a trapdoor – a thought that she accidentally said out loud causing some concern on Beck’s part. 

“You remember that this is real life and not a play, right babe? Do I need to borrow some of Robbie’s anti-psychotics?”

She just rolled her eyes at him. 

Cat, in the meantime, seemed to be plodding away at her usual pace. She had gotten pretty good at that over the past couple years – and the fire that they had all gotten such a small snapshot of the first night Tori had been there seemed to have disappeared in a flash. 

Regardless of the fact that Andrea had said she was going to push the issue with Cat, they only had one session a week and it wasn’t like Jade could suddenly now – after all this time – start playing Nancy Drew with Cat’s memory. 

It would give away the ending. 

 

So when, on the fourth day, Trina entered the theatre without Tori in tow, Jade stopped being curious and started being downright testy. Because if she wasn’t with Trina and everyone else was at the theatre being good sports and going over their lines and helping Cat with their costumes, then where the fuck was Tori?

She picked up on the fifth ring, “Yeah I know I’m late to rehearsal, Jade. I’ll be there in a bit.”

“Where are you?”

“Not now, okay?”

“Just… tell me where you are.”

“Jade—”

“It isn’t like you to bail on rehearsal and we haven’t actually talked since you got here which you know I don’t really mind because talking ugh but could you get your ass to the theatre and stop being a diva?”

“First of all, I call bullshit. You love talking. You love talking to me. You love me. Secondly…” Tori sighed and Jade could almost see her blowing the long bangs out of her face, “I’m with Katie-cat. I had her nanny bring her down and Trina’s been running me all around hell…”

“Bring her!”

“No.”

“At least tell Trina that she’s here it’s not like—”

“No.”

“She’s the girl’s aunt she should know—”

“No!”

“Tori just—”

“Goddamnit I said NO, Jade.”

“Everyone in the world knows that you had a kid, Tori. It’s not like it’s some secret.”

“I’m just not ready to parade her around, okay?”

“ _Parade_? What the fuck are we Tori? The fucking paparazzi? We’re your goddamn family.”

“No. You’re not.”

“Well Trina fucking is.”

“Right now, Jade. Cat… _Katie_ is my family. And I just don’t …”

“She’s not a fucking fairy princess you can’t keep her locked up in a tower forever.”

“Yeah well… when you have a kid, you can give out motherly advice. Until then you can shut the fuck up.”

“You know I won’t do that.”

“No. You won’t. But you can give me an hour, okay?”

An hour later Tori walked into the theatre – her short hair pulled back into a ponytail, her heels held in one hand, and the hand of a small girl with bright brown eyes and dark, curly hair, and a broad smile.

Robbie shouted down from the sound booth, “Holy shit Andre, you knocked up Tori?”

To which Andre replied, from his precarious position hanging onto a light over the stage, “Just ‘cause I’m the only brother you know, doesn’t mean I’m the only brother around.”

Robbie shrugged, “It was worth asking.”

Tori craned her head up to look at Robbie, “Could you not fucking swear in front of my kid?”

Katie lurched out of Tori’s grip and ran up onto the stage before her mother could stop her, stopping short right before tumbling over Cat who was lying on the floor.

“Why are you lying like that?”

Cat smiled, “Because sometimes it’s nice to see the world from a different side.”

Katie looked back at her mom and then bent over to look at her again from between her legs, “Sometimes I like to look at mommy like this.”

Cat giggled, “Is she prettier that way?”

Katie stood up straight, “Mommy is the prettiest always.”

“I think so, too.”

“What does it look like down there?”

Cat patted the rug beside her, “Come see.”

Katie straightened her shoulders carefully, “I’m Katie but my mommy calls me Kat-with-a-K.” 

“I’m Cat-with-a-C.”

Katie nodded and stuck out her chubby hand with glittery nail polish, “It’s nice to meet another one of me.”

Cat shook her hand seriously, “Have you ever met another Kat before?”

“Nope.” Katie stretched herself out beside Cat on the ground, folding her arms behind her head like a pillow and crossing her ankles. “You’re my first one. Except the cat that mommy found once and named ‘Cat’ like a movie and not like me.”

“I like that movie.”

“It makes mommy cry.”

“Me too.”

“Why do adults like things that make them cry?”

“Because sometimes crying is about something beautiful and not about something sad.”

“Mommy says sometimes things that are sad can be pretty.”

“That, too.”

“You’re really smart, Cat-with-a-C.”

“Thank you, Kat-with-a-K.”

Katie popped her head up and waved to her mother, who was still standing in the doorway, still as a statue, “Mommy come see!”

“In just a minute, baby. Mommy needs to make a phone call.”

Tori watched Kat’s head disappear back down next to Cat’s and then shakily darted out the door. 

Jade was already there, holding a bottle of water out to her, “You weren’t ready for that were you?”

Tori took the water and shrugged, “Ready had nothing to do with it.”

 

Kat and Cat played around the set, giggling like old pals, for the rest of the afternoon. Cat taught her how to do a light change – much to Robbie’s dismay – and how to hand out props and took her advice on costumes under serious consideration – until Tori bundled Katie up and promised a longer visit next time. 

When they were alone in the theatre, Beck turned to Jade and for once didn’t lovingly mock her for the tears in her eyes.

“Okay, I admit it. I have no fucking idea what I’m doing.”

Beck took her in his arms and smiled into her hair, “When have you ever?”

“Always.”

“Never.”

“Never.”


	5. five: tori

The first thing she said to Cat Valentine after eight years were a few lines from a script and she’d never been more grateful for anything in her life. For the first time in a very long time she was sure that she wasn’t about to stick her foot in her mouth.

Only watching Cat walk away – when they hadn’t said anything really, just words from a fucking script Jade had written for them – felt just as gut-wrenchingly awful as she had never let herself imagine.

And then they dragged her out to dinner and she had to watch them all be fucking _happy_ and together. Their hands and bodies and eyes all telling her in no uncertain terms that they didn’t belong to her anymore.

That she didn’t belong to them. 

For so many years she had felt a bit like a stray puppy just waiting for her family to pick her up off the side of the road and bring her effortlessly back into their possession.

She was self-aware enough to know that part of her wanted to be _owned_ and old enough to know that path could lead to very dangerous places.

It was just like that movie Trina had been obsessed with then they were kids about the family animals that had to track their family through the wilds of Northern California in order to get back home. Only all she got at the end of the journey was the nightmare: they had moved on, had shrunk down and filled the empty space she left behind with each other. 

Which was her fault, not theirs. 

She hadn’t been fighting to return to them, she was _told_ to come home. She hadn’t been searching all that time – they’d always been right there, just in arm’s reach. 

It’s just that one missed call after another just made it that much harder to return any. What do you say after three months of radio silence? A year? Three years? A pregnancy? A failed almost-marriage?

At what point does _Sorry it’s been so long_ carry the weight of years of unanswered calls?

When she found Jade in that shitty pub just a few hours after miscarriage, she thought for a tiny moment that maybe this could fix everything. Until she thought of Cat and all the explanations she owed her – all the unspoken things she now knew she couldn’t _not_ say if they ever saw each other again. 

She didn’t intentionally name her child after Cat Valentine. Actually, Katie was a family name. It was just that there was so much about Katie that reminded her of Cat…

No.

This is how it actually goes: 

Every night, Tori spun stories for her daughter’s ears to help her fall asleep. Sometimes in rhyme and sometimes in song and sometimes in silly prose with elaborate voices – but always a magical little girl with fire red hair named Cat who went on many adventures and was always strong and brave and beautiful – and maybe a little silly. 

And one bright summer day at the park baby Katie made the connection that maybe children always implicitly make about the stories their parents whisper into their ear in the cover of twilight, “A cat story please mommy like baby Katie like me a baby Katie-cat like kitty-cat I want a cat story please mommy about me?”

And it became more true the older Kat got – how much like Cat from Tori’s past. 

Though how much of Cat came from Katie and how much it was just Katie emulating her mother’s stories – and how much were Tori’s stories even about a real Cat anymore – she could no longer tell.

Maybe she had intentionally imprinted her memories – or fantasies of memories – of Cat upon her daughter, or maybe not. She figured there were worse ways you could screw up your child than raising them in the model of the person you loved the most in the world. 

Or maybe it was the absolute worst thing she could do. 

Did it matter?

She didn’t belong to them anymore, so she was glad – in a way – that she had Kat. That at the end of this fucking miserable experiment of Jade’s she could go back in hiding with her Kat and pretend that loving a copy as a daughter was as good as having the original.

 

And then Cat sang.

 

And it made Tori’s blood boil – that beautiful voice, locked away in regional theatre when it should have been its own label and youtube channel and fragrance line.

They had her and she should have been shared with the world – should be on every radio in every car. (And she wasn’t thinking at all about how much she wanted just a piece of Cat for herself, oh no.) So she lashed out, at _Cat_ of all people. 

Who bit back like something feral and untamed and not at all like the fairy princess from Katie’s stories. Which either made Tori angry or sad – she wasn’t sure which. She wasn’t even sure if she had a right to either emotion.

And then Trina – in her new voice, in her voice-cracking-I-care-and-I-cry-now voice – spat out accusations like bullets aimed straight at Tori’s heart. 

 

_You ran away._

 

And she couldn’t even argue because it wasn’t not true. She _did_ run away. 

From her feelings for Cat.

From the way they were all part of each other.

She ran away and isolated herself because that actually seemed safer than whatever it was they were all doing while she was gone. 

But she knew a thing or two about being bipolar – it was a term that had been thrown around a lot right after Katie when her mood swings seemed a bit more uncontrollable. She was given lots of pamphlets and informational packets about all kinds of things. All dropped when she nearly lost herself in the nightmare that followed in the wake of the miscarriage. 

“Post-partum” they said with easy smiles, as if knowing the word made the pain somehow easier to bear. (He was big enough to warrant a tiny little headstone, he left behind a hole large enough that nothing – not Katie, not a fiancé, not music, not a vacation to Paris could fill. He was big enough to have broken a lot of dreams. She sold the condo with the little green and yellow nursery next to Katie’s blue and orange playroom.)

Yeah, she knew everything she could know about Cat’s illness.

And so she took a few days off just to watch. Saw them all oscillate around her like she could break or explode any moment. 

Like she was a child in their care and not a fully fucking grown woman with a career and a life. To see them you’d think that all there was left was a disease – holding them all together like a sick parasite – instead of a fully-functional human being.

There seemed to be a consensus that Tori’s presence was a viable and potentially dangerous threat to the stability they all mistakenly believed they had. She tested the waters here and there – little things to see if anyone – especially Cat herself – would give her a clue to link together the passage of time into the picture she had stepped haphazardly into.

She felt like she was grasping up handfuls of sand, searching for the mere shard of a diamond.

 

When Jade called, Tori had already decided to bring Katie to the theatre. She put up a fight… because sometimes she needed a fight to get her started. 

And she wasn’t really ready after all. Even if Katie was. And even if she was long past needing to be.

Even if…

What she wasn’t prepared for – stupidly enough – was for Katie to instantly take to Cat like peanut butter melting into warm toast. Seeing the two of them lying on the stage, talking to each other like they were old friends, opened up the floodgates of a thousand hundred scenes of a happy family she had never dared to let herself even imagine.

Jade was there with a water and a comforting smile and the truth, “You weren’t ready for that were you?”

“Ready’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Maybe what we let ourselves be ready for and what we have to force ourselves to deal with really aren’t that different.”

“A rose by any other name…”

“Hey roses,” Andre slouched over to them. “Can I have a minute alone with Tori?”

Jade shrugged, “Just don’t miss your cue.”

Tori backed up against the wall and took a swig of water, “So ask. You want to ask.”

“You’re old boyfriend–”

“Manager.”

“… manager—”

“Fiancé.”

“… fiancé--- whatever! Ryan. Ryan right?”

“Ryan.”

“Well I’ve met Ryan. A few years back. White boy with blonde hair and blue eyes like a Barbie doll.”

“Ken.”

“What.”

“Barbie’s boyfriend? His name is Ken.”

“How old is she, Tori?”

“She’ll be five in August.”

Andre slumped against the wall next to her and Tori had to fight the urge to move (towards him, away from him, run down the block, she wasn’t sure), “Were you going to tell me?”

“Oh come on. You aren’t … what did you say? You’re not the ‘only brother’ I know.”

“God _damnit_ Tori,” Andre barely whispered the words between gritted teeth. “She looks just like my grandma does in all her old photos she’s made me look at every year since I was… You think I wouldn’t know my own kid?”

Tori blinked back the tears she couldn’t dare let fall, “You can do math, Andre. It was in all the tabloids. You never called…” She shrugged. It was a masterful shrug. It spoke volumes.

It said nothing.

“Eight fucking years, Vega. I run into you at a party with the label after three years of not hearing from you, we fuck in an elevator, and then six years later you show up and this is about _my_ bad communication.”

“You didn’t want her,” she said it to her feet. To the dirt beneath her feet – somewhere dirt beneath concrete and the soles of her shoes. She said it in a whisper not meant for him to hear.

Maybe she didn’t even mean to say it to him at all, but it’s what she said and who talks to their feet when the father of their child is demanding an explanation.

Andre shook his head, “You don’t’ know anything about what I want.”

He left her trembling and crying against the wall of the theatre.

“You didn’t want me,” she whispered to no one in particular. “You just don’t know it.” 

 

 

The next morning, Tori called Cat and asked if she could bring Katie down to the preschool she worked at just for the day. Lots of _I don’t like leaving her with strangers, but I trust you and it’s been so long since she was able to socialize I just feel bad about keeping her cooped up with her nanny in a hotel for too long_ bullshit that was true enough that Cat eagerly welcomed the idea of Katie coming in for the morning. _I’m sure Jade will understand if you stay with Katie for the day and I’ll totally be your understudy – you’re the best!_. 

She marched into the theatre knowing full-well that Cat wouldn’t be coming by at any point that day and armed with a box of bagels.

They were all standing on the stage as if they were waiting for her. 

“So what was the plan, exactly? Fly me in from Agra and just… what. What is your endgame?”

Andre folded his arms over his chest, “What’s yours?”

Tori blushed, “Can’t it be enough that I missed you?”

“Considering the fact that you’ve been here for almost a week and didn’t mention _once_ that Andre is the father of your child – yeah. _Missing us_ doesn’t quite fucking cut it,” Robbie sat down on the ground at Trina’s feet and tentatively clung to her legs, as if afraid that she might kick him off. 

Tori narrowed her eyes, “We all make choices in our lives, Robbie. I’m not going to apologize for mine. I did what I thought was right for everyone.”

“Keeping Katie from me wasn’t your decision to make.”

“Ryan wanted her. He didn’t even care that she wasn’t his. He wanted to make a life with me.”

“And I didn’t?!”

“Andre,” Trina’s voice was calm but held in it a warning. “Tori, if you had just come _home_.”

Tori laughed – it was ugly and cutting and she felt vindicated in it, she wore it like an old glove and the only one in the room who recognized it for the sad, fragile thing that it was just smiled back and said nothing, “Come back here and _what_? And give up everything I worked for? And sit around here like you and just… just what? Just _what_?”

“You _left_ \--” Andre spluttered.

“Yeah and you _stayed_.” She eyed them all warily. Andre leaning against a table with his arms over his chest, Trina standing solidly with Robbie at her feet and tears in her eyes, Jade and Beck lounging on the little loveseat they brought in earlier that week from a thriftshop, legs and fingers tangled up like they were one person. She sneered at them. “Yeah and you _stayed_ \- you stayed because you are all fucking cowards. And from what it looks like, you’ve been using Cat as a scapegoat for your own wasted lives. _Oh Cat’s too fragile we can’t leave!_ bullshit. You stayed and you want to make me feel bad for leaving … you want to put Cat on my shoulders like … like…”

“You don’t know anything about that. You know _nothing_ about anything so stop before you say something you regret.”

“Oh the honorable Andre has an opinion about this, do you? I’ve seen you around Cat – you think we don’t all see. Why don’t you tell her that you are in love with her? Too afraid? Is that why you’re hiding out in that shit label working on _other people’s music_ instead of making your own?”

“When’s the last time you sang something that was yours?”

Tori fixed her eyes on Robbie, “My second album. All me. From beginning to end.”

Andre snorted, “Not your best work.”

Tori shrugged, “I was young. I was angry. I had something to prove. … I … I had something to say.”

“You don’t have the right to say anything about Cat… about what she’s been through… you weren’t here,” Andre was pacing now.

“I know that Cat deserves to be singing for the world and not the ABC’s for a handful of someone else’s kids.”

“Yeah? What has the world given you that’s so great?”

“At least I left and took a chance! You’re all just sitting around here not doing anything!”

“Who says Cat wants to leave?” 

“Well staying here with you all and being treated like an infant surely didn’t help.”

Robbie’s voice sounded a bit strangled, “We don’t treat her like an infant.”

“Right. So you all stay here and look after Cat and that makes her feel all warm and cozy I’m sure – but sometimes growing is about things not being warm and cozy. Tell me you didn’t stay for Cat. One of you tell me that there wasn’t a moment when you could have left and you chose to stay because of poor, fragile Cat.”

“I didn’t stay for Cat,” Trina interrupted. They all looked at her, shocked; while Robbie rubbed her calf soothingly and leaned his head against her knee. “I didn’t. I should have… maybe… that whole thing with the hospital and her brother or not-brother or … I left. And I didn’t like it. I came back for me. We all are here for our own reasons.”

Beck raised his hand, “I left. I went to New York. I came back for my _own_ reasons.”

Tori shifted under his gaze, “You could have been fine in New York, Beck.”

He shrugged, fingers lazily painting a picture in the sky with Jade’s fingers, “Probably. But I was better here.”

“Cat was really bad off,” Andre stopped pacing and faced away from them. “And I thought about leaving… I could have. Maybe Seattle? I could have done great in Seattle probably.” He turned back to them, “Staying here was about being close to Cat… and to you. And to my grandma. And to the things that I know. It wasn’t the easy way out. It was the right decision. I don’t’ regret it. I don’t blame _any_ of you.”

Robbie shook his head, “Cat wasn’t strong enough to leave before… maybe. But I stayed because…” he looked up at Trina. “The people I love are here.”

“You can love people in new places, Robbie.”

He looked at Tori, “Is that what the world gave you? What you think the world can give Cat better than we did? Love? Do you think you got love when you ran away?”

“What _happened_ to Cat? Why don’t you talk about it?” she was deflecting, but she also knew they weren’t saying.

“Ask her yourself,” Jade’s voice joining the chorus for the first time.

“She doesn’t _remember_!!” it sounded like Andre said, but Jade spoke calmly over him. 

“I’d be curious to hear what Cat has to say about all your theories.”

“I know I haven’t been here long – but I can _see_ you all. You treat her differently.”

“Differently than what?” Beck raised his eyebrows at her, “Have you ever known any of us to be hard on Cat? To not be there for her? To not care about her? What about our behavior is really all that different from what it was like before?”

Tori struggled to keep control of the situation, “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe things _should_ have changed. Should it really feel the same as it did eight years ago?”

Trina shook her head, “God you are so oblivious. Can’t you see how much has changed?”

“You’re all still here – clinging to each other like…”

“Like family,” Andre put his arm around Trina. “Yeah we’re all protective of Cat. But you should see how fired up Jade can actually get if anyone tries to mess with Trina.”

“I nearly took out that creep lawyer’s jugular with my nails once,” Jade smiled from the couch, Beck pressing a kiss to her temple. 

“Maybe the reason you think…” Robbie shook his head and trailed off. “Fuck, Tori.”

“Took you long enough,” Beck smiled, throwing a pencil at Robbie’s head.

“You want to know why we are all so worried about Cat? I’ll tell you.” Robbie stood up and shushed Jade’s protest with a wave of his hands. “She had a breakdown a few years ago. It was pretty bad. She was in hospital for … it was bad. She didn’t know who she was.”

“She wasn’t Cat,” Andre cut in.

Robbie shrugged, “More or less. She doesn’t remember – as far as we know – anything that happened. She got help afterwards but…”

“She thought you … she was a bit paranoid for a while. Thought that you had been kidnapped.”

Robbie nodded at Jade’s interjection, “Among other things.”

Tori shook her head, trying to understand what they were telling her but mostly coming up blank.

“I admit it,” Jade said softly. “I admit to staying for Cat. I admit to being over-cautious. I admit to wanting to stay where I could be near her. I admit to being worried that if she left she wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

“I admit to blaming you,” Andre shrugged and smiled. “Still do. You ran away. Twice.”

“You may think that we’re all selfish, childish, silly idiots sitting around here. You may think that we scapegoat Cat and made her into an excuse not to leave,” Tori kicked Robbie off so she could sit down next to him. “That’s fine. We pretty much all think you are shitty, scaredy-cat, selfish child for leaving.”

 _It’s been easy to blame you for hurting Cat because you weren’t here when we were helping her put herself together._ No one said it but it rang loud and clear. 

_You left._

“Why do you tell yourself that you left?” Jade had a laugh to the edge of her voice and Tori could have seriously punched her right in that smug face.

“To follow my dream! To live all of our dreams!”

“So why not keep in touch?”

“Why keep away my kid?”

“Why keep running?”

Jade’s voice was the lowest, but it was the one she picked up out of the chorus of voices, “Why not run now?”

This intervention did not go according to plan. She thought she had started at the top and suddenly was swimming at the bottom with the fishes and couldn’t tell where she had started from or where she was going. 

“Endgame? Was to see if Cat could handle having you around.”

“If we all could, probably.”

“Look…” Beck stopped everyone from chattering to each other with a wave of his hand. “Yeah we tiptoe around Cat. But that’s normal, I think? We love her. And so we protect her when we can. What isn’t normal is fucking ignoring the people you care about for years and then being angry that they are okay.”

“Or that they’re not okay,” Robbie said softly.

“Or that you didn’t notice that maybe they weren’t okay all along,” Trina said pointedly in a way that made Tori feel as though she was still sitting in that sandbox, handfuls of sand spilling all around her, threatening to drown her.

Andre eyed Tori, as if he was suddenly seeing her for the first time in years, “Are _you_ okay Tori?”

She looked at them each in turn and then laughed, “Obviously fucking not. What part of any of this looks like okay?” They didn’t laugh with her. “Are _you_ okay?”

Trina smiled, “Sometimes. Sometimes we’re really great.”

“That’s the best you can hope for.”

“And me?”

Jade shrugged, “Well you didn’t start an apocalypse so now it’s up to you.”

“Well… she hasn’t started an apocalypse _yet_. It’s still too soon to tell,” Andre said with a self-deprecating grin. “I mean, what’s more life altering – finding out you have a kid or—”

They all looked at Tori. 

“Funny how catastrophes sometimes just… aren’t,” Trina mused from the floor.


	6. act two

Tori’s only self-written album, _Yesterday_ , wasn’t the most interesting album he’d ever listened to. In fact, Andre pretty much thought it was one of the worst things he’d ever seen attributed to Tori Vega’s name.

(The things they had written together, those were the best. Not just for her, but for him, too. And not because of him or because she was probably the easiest person to compose with or because they balanced each other in all the right ways – she held back his sentimentality and he stopped her from being too safe – but because of all of those things.)

He could pick out moments on every track where he would have reeled her in, held her back, pushed her a bit more. He could almost feel the slight touch of her hair on the back of his hand as she made notes on the sheet music propped up on his keyboard. He did this a lot with music – could see the missing links and cracks in the armor – could see how he could make it better. But _Yesterday_ was like

And that was all a bit too much, so he stopped listening to it. Only suffering through it for the sake of Cat – who obsessively knew all the lyrics and every pause for breath that Tori took on every track.

A month or so after their tryst at the office party in an elevator, she posted an original piece on her website, just her and her guitar in a dark room. _Yesterday, too_ ended up on the back end of her next album, dropped just before news circulated about her daughter’s birth.

He never listened to it.

 

The day he saw his child for the first time lie down next to Cat on a stage like she was born to live there with them, he went home and listened to _Yesterday, too_ for the first time.

It was inelegant, it was rough, and it was pure Tori Vega. In ways that her music – still hitting the top 40 radio stations despite her heart obviously no longer being in it – hadn’t in a long time. About lost love and lost dreams and saying goodbye. And it almost felt like he could understand her again, in that way that they had always been able to understand each other through music.

He should have been there, when she wrote it. He was in every line – and he wasn’t. He was part of it, but he wasn’t.

It could have been a duet.

It _should_ have been a duet.

 

_You always reminded me_   
_Like a freight train moving East_   
_When I wanted to be moving West_   
_Waving goodbye from the tail end_   
_Of these rotten dreams_   
_We used to paint like that’d get us_   
_Somewhere safe_   
_Reminded me that waving_   
_Playing_   
_Laughing_   
_Were the scars we chose to show_   
_Not the wounds we tried to hide_

When the song closed, youtube gave him a box of suggestions for what to listen to next. Which he typically ignored. He didn’t really want to listen to Tori Vega’s _Party Party_ for the umpteenth time.

Except something caught his eye.

_Thricewise Yesterday_

 

And it was good. Damn good.

He just knew that he could make it better.

 

He showed up at Trina’s door with his keyboard under one arm (even though Trina had a fully-functioning piano in her dining room), a six-pack of beer, and two _Papa Murphy’s_ pizzas. Trina’s eyes gleamed when she opened the door and Kat threw herself on his legs unceremoniously with a “Hi Uncle Andre!” that didn’t make him nearly as angry as he might have been a few hours before.

They sat hunkered over the piano while Kat banged out ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ on his keyboard on the floor a few feet away with Trina and Robbie calling out insults and suggestions from the kitchen and they ate pizza and Robbie drank too many beers and started kissing everyone on the cheek like a giant dork.

And she was flushed and her eyes shone and he felt alive.

This. This was what they were meant to do. Create. Together.

Around two in the morning it was damn near polished and Trina was curled up with a sleeping Kat in her lap and Robbie made the call to Jade. She and Beck arrived within fifteen minutes – hair rumpled and clad in matching plaid pajamas.

 

And a plan was hatched.

 

 

“You asked me about my brother,” Cat narrowed her eyes at Andrea and straightened her shoulders.

Jade’s opening was that night. And no one had really said what was going to happen after that. Tori seemed to be getting along with everyone in the same way she had back… when they were kids. Andre was getting to know Katie in his soft way. Trina and Tori seemed more like sisters than they ever had been. She even caught Beck and Tori giggling about something a few nights ago, heads bent over one of his soap script.

Andrea didn’t show her surprise. She was a careful, practiced sort of person. But Cat sensed it in the way she leaned slightly forward, “Yes, I did. A few weeks ago.”

“Yes.” Cat sighed. “What do you want to know?”

Andrea made like she was flipping through her notes to remind herself the context.

Cat sometimes got a little resentful that people presumed that she didn’t know what was going on. That she hadn’t seen the Psychology books in Jade’s study-nook buried under scraps of fabric and old copies of _Our Town_. That she hadn’t smelled Jade’s perfume in Andrea’s office – that she didn’t know those long hours in the theatre were now being supplemented by an internship at her own therapist’s office.

That she didn’t remember things.

Andrea stopped on an innocuous page that Cat would have bet a million dollars didn’t have the notes from the day Tori came back on them. “Oh yes. I was curious whether your brother came by the hospital when you were admitted a few years ago.”

Cat crossed her arms over her chest, uncrossed them and lay her hands in her lap, lifted her hands to crack her knuckles, shifted her legs so that she was pressing her hands into the soft couch with the pressure of her thighs.

It was now or later.

There wasn’t a never.

That had always been clear.

But she had never before wanted so desperately to be the kind of woman who was ready for the hard things. She had always been a girl who hid the harsh truths behind a bright smile and a silly laugh meant to make others laugh with her. She had always been a girl that was more comfortable hiding her monsters under the bed.

And there was nothing like seeing the person she loved most facing her own fears and walking with her head held high to make her realize the time for hiding was over.

“That’s impossible.”

“What is impossible?”

“That my _brother_ would come to the hospital. It’s impossible because I don’t have a brother. I never had a brother.”

Andrea stared at her owlishly, as if she anticipated Cat was going to say something very different.

Maybe they all did.

“Or… I guess I don’t really know for sure if never is the right word. He may have been real _sometime_ ,” Cat smiled and a tear trickled down her face. “I think I won’t ever give up hope that he was possible. That she didn’t just make him up completely.”

“Your mother?”

And like that, all the pretenses between Andrea and Cat were gone.

“It’s just too sad to me to think that maybe she never had him. Because she loves him so much.”

“I’m sure she loved you, too.”

Cat laughed and it hid nothing and exposed everything. Probably the first time in her life she had ever laughed with honesty.

It hurt.

She didn’t think that laughter was supposed to hurt. But growing was about learning.

And maybe this was just something she needed to learn.

That laughter could expose hurt instead of covering it up.

What a host of beautiful possibilities that held.

“She loved me best when I wasn’t. When I was him.”

“When did that start?”

Cat shrugged, “I’m not sure. Before I really could understand it probably.”

“Did you ever—”

“No. I mean I don’t think so. That’s a tricky question to ask isn’t it? _Did you lose yourself?_ How can I know the answer to that?”

“The laryngitis?”

“I remember.”

Andrea moved over to the couch and took Cat’s hand in hers, her notes left behind on her chair.

And Cat cried for the broken hearted young woman that hid behind a mask of smiles, behind the mask of a boy who never lived, because she didn’t want the people she loved to know the depths of her pain.

 

 

The second half of the play was designed to fuck with the actors. That’s what Jade said with a smile when they first started rehearsal. Only she and Robbie knew everyone’s cues and exits and entrances. Only she had the full master list of the lighting cues and sound effects and music.

The premise of the play was that slowly, throughout the first act, the actors started to slip through the cracks of character. As if it were a rehearsal and the actors were dropping their characters between scenes, slowly allowing the audience to see the performance as the show went along.

By Act Two, they all were supposed to be acting on instinct. Now in-character as actors that were no longer in-character at all while a dress rehearsal for something else went on around them. Improvisation on an epic scale with minor parameters that let them exit and enter.

It was supposed to be acting. Their ‘actors’ another character that they kept wrapped around themselves like the professionals they all were.

Except not a single one of them had any more intention of doing so.

And that was Jade’s purpose from the beginning.

 

 

Cat had the first entrance of the second act. Her only directions were, _end on the word ‘wait’; exit on the word ‘still’_.

She could have run out on stage and shouted ‘WAIT’ immediately if she wanted to.

She didn’t.

She hugged Jade and walked calmly to the center of the apron and sat down cross-legged on the stage.

She smiled at the audience and said the things she didn’t know how to say without a mask.

“When I was sixteen I fell in love with my best friend. She was beautiful and perfect and I told myself that just _knowing_ her was enough.” She shook her head and a few people in the audience laughed softly. “Young girls are funny that way. We think we’ll be content with scraps and try to hide the fact that we want the whole universe right now, all at once.” A woman in the front row blinked and two tears rolled down her cheeks. Cat leaned forward and said in a bright stage whisper, “So you remember?” The woman laughed and nodded. Women all through the audience chuckled, remembering. “I kissed lots of boys when I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen. Boys are so fun to kiss.” She tilted her head and smirked, “Girls are better.” Everyone laughed. She was good at making people laugh. Something bloomed inside her chest, knowing that she – just Cat – could do that. Could have an entire audience laugh in understanding. She stood up and began pacing the front of the stage. “Life is so predictable. People grow, people change, people move away and live lives you never imagined. But when you are young, you want to believe that you are different, that your heart won’t break.” She threw her arms out wide and said loudly, “Mine did. Into a thousand splintering pieces.” She lifted her head back to look at the ceiling, she thought of Andre and Robbie crawling on that catwalk trading insults and calling down to the others as they worked below. Her audience waited.

She dropped her hands and looked at them again, “Broken hearts are rather mundane, aren’t they? Everyone hides them in different ways. I’m an actor. I hide behind masks. We take the stage with us, you know.” She could sense the others watching her from the sidelines and she looked back at them, there were no rules and she let them know she wasn’t playing by their old ones anymore. Time for revision. “All the world’s a stage. And I do it better than _anyone_.” She saw a gleam of tears on Jade’s cheeks and smiled, turning back to her audience.

Because she may be ready. But she was still Cat Valentine.

“When I was a little girl my mother played this game with me. Big brother she called it. She dressed me in jeans and a baseball cap and she called me Peter. When I got hurt, when I was sad, when I wanted something I couldn’t have – she called me Peter and then the hurt went away. I may have fallen off my bike and skinned my knee, but Peter didn’t.” Cat’s voice caught in her throat and she coughed. To her left, there was a rustle.

But she had to do this on her own.

“So when I grew up and my best friend left and I was broken and couldn’t eat and couldn’t sleep and didn’t know how to college when it wasn’t going the way I planned, I let Peter take the pain away.”

Her audience was still. She smiled down at them. Comforted them.

“Just for a little while. I’m a really good actress.” She raised her eyebrows and smirked at the audience and they giggled with her because she asked them to.

When she became solemn and serious, they followed her. They trusted her.

“When Peter left, I was hollowed out. There wasn’t any pain anymore. But I couldn’t _love_ anymore. He took everything.” The tears flowed freely down her face, but they didn’t hurt. They were warm and comforting. They held her together like a blanket.

She gave herself to her audience, her confessional box, she said the thing that she was hiding in the deepest, most terrified part of herself.

“I want to love her, do you see?” A couple of people nodded at her, wiping tears from their own faces. “I want to be afraid and excited and nervous and give her all of that.”

She stepped upstage and took a deep breath, “I’m tired of **wait** ing.”

Beck burst onto the stage as if he had been running a great distance and swept her up in a big hug. The audience was so surprised by his entrance that they immediately started clapping.

Cat laughed.

A happy, satisfied, open, beautiful laugh.

When he sat her down, he cupped her face with his hands.

“Hi. I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi you.”

“I have the chips and everything.”

“I’m proud of you.”

Beck stepped away and smirked at her. Going to the edge of the stage he said to the audience in a happy, boisterous shout, “I think we all want to know. Do you **still** love her?”

The lights flickered from bright yellow to a soft blue and Cat shook her head.

“That’s my cue.”

And left Beck alone on the stage, walking into the darkness and straight into Jade’s waiting arms.

He turned to the audience.

“I put rootbeer in beer bottles when I’m out in public. I hide my disease like a shameful sexy **secret**.”

Jade walked out, “My boyfriend is an alcoholic. He is ashamed. I keep his chips in my underwear drawer. His strength is the sexiest thing **about** him.”

Beck blew her a kiss and backed off the stage.

Jade smirked at the audience, “ **Penguin**.”

Andre somersaulted onto the stage, “Schizophrenia is genetic. When I **hold** my daughter I can’t help but **wonder** if I doomed her before she even began.”

Trina wrapped one arm around his waist, “My boyfriend and I have to sleep in separate beds so that I won’t have an anxiety attack in the night. We have separate bathrooms so that we don’t get our medication mixed up.”

Andre laughed, “ **Normal** cy is overrated.”

Tori took his hand, “And not as easy as we were told it was when we were kids.” She looked at the audience, “They tell you that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They never tell you that _normal_ is a term created just to keep you afraid.”

She poked her sister on the nose, “ **Lipstick**.” And Trina walked off the stage.

Tori walked up to the apron, squared herself in the same spot Cat had sat down in when the act started. “I had a miscarriage and finally understood for myself what the words ‘postpartum depression’ mean. It was **scary**. But I survived.”

She looked over her shoulder and smiled at Cat, who came up to stand beside her, “Is surviving the same as living?”

Cat shook her head, “What do they think?” She gestured at the audience, so willing to go on this ride with them. So unaware of how many wounds they had laid bare for their entertainment.

Maybe that was the only way they ever could have said the things that they needed to say.

Maybe that was the only way they ever knew how to communicate – even to each other.

 _We need to work on that,_ Cat thought to herself. It wasn’t cost-effective to have Jade stage these productions every time they needed to be honest with each other.

Thing was, they were still learning how to be honest with themselves.

She smiled down at them, “Do you think surviving is the same as living?”

They shook their heads up at her – some looking at each other in mystification – and a couple of the more courageous shouting out “No!” from the darkness.

Tori pursed her lips theatrically, “And what are you going to do with your new life?”

“I’m not sure. It’s still new.” She was floundering a bit. Not yet sure where this was going. Trying to adjust to not knowing what was going to happen next. “What about you?”

“Can I show you?” Tori waved a hand at Robbie sitting in a booth far above them. “I guess it’s **time**.”

Andre rolled out his keyboard and Trina brought out a chair, forcing Cat into it facing away from the audience. Someone handed Tori a microphone.

Behind her, Cat could hear the audience getting excited. Tori Vega was going to _sing_!?!

Tori leaned over Cat and whispered in her ear, “Trust me. Please just trust me one last time.”

She turned to the audience and bowed. “Some of you may know this song but most of you won’t. I had some help. Sometimes…” she paused and looked back at Andre, Jade, Trina, and Beck who were standing clustered together behind Andre’s keyboard. “Sometimes you just need a little help.” She faced the audience again, laughing at herself, “Me especially. I suck on my own.”

Robbie dropped a mirror ball and everything got really sparkly and colorful.

Cat was going to rip them all to shreds with her fingernails for springing this on her.

“It’s called ‘Thricewise Yesterday’ and it’s … ah…” Tori blushed. “It’s a bit of a love song.”

 

  
_But it wasn’t, was, wasn’t_  
 _The song on your lips_  
 _the sun in your hair_  
 _the light you tried to hide_  
 _But it wasn’t, was, wasn’t_  
 _The way I clung to the memory of you_  
 _The way you held my heart_  
 _Right in the palm of your hand_

_It was, wasn’t, was_   
_Walking down the street_   
_Holding hands_   
_In a dream, dream, a dreamer’s dream_

_It was, wasn’t, was_   
_Holding you beneath my fingers_   
_Feeling you breath_   
_In a dream, dream, a dreamer’s dream_

_But it wasn’t, was, wasn’t_   
_The love in your heart_   
_The grace in your faith_   
_The beauty you couldn’t hide_   
_But it wasn’t, was, wasn’t_   
_The way I love, love, love you_   
_The way you hold my heart_   
_Right in the palm of your hand_

The curtain closed on Cat pressing her lips firmly to Tori’s, standing on tiptoe, and smiling into the other woman’s mouth.


End file.
